Posted on 08/07/2002 9:27:49 AM PDT by cogitator
Sustainable Development Called Security Imperative
WASHINGTON, DC, August 6, 2002 (ENS) - Sustainable development is a security imperative, writes Secretary of State Colin Powell in a special publication of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
UNEP will publish a special edition of its magazine, "Our Planet," to coincide with the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development, containing articles on environmental issues by a variety of international leaders, including Powell.
In his article, Powell describes sustainable development as a "compelling moral and humanitarian issue" and says that delivering environmentally friendly development is vital for delivering a more stable world.
"Poverty, environmental degradation and despair are destroyers of people, of societies, of nations. This unholy trinity can destabilize countries, even entire regions," Powell writes.
"Despite the stories and images of trouble we read in our newspapers and view on our television screens, this is a time of great opportunities to expand peace, prosperity and freedom," he continues. "The spread of democracy and market economies, combined with breakthroughs in technology, permits us to dream of a day when, for the first time in history, most of humanity will be free of the ravages of tyranny and poverty."
In another article, UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer argues that failure at the Summit cannot be contemplated, as the risks are too great.
"Unless a new course is chartered for planet Earth we risk a new 'Iron Curtain,' dividing not East and West, but the haves and the have nots - with all the ramifications of increased tensions, jealousies and hatreds between and within countries," Toepfer writes.
Other authors of articles for the magazine include Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, which is hosting the Summit from August 26 through September 4 in Johannesburg. Mbeki writes of the need to address the world's existing patterns of production and consumption.
"If the Chinese citizen is to consume the same quantity of crude oil as his or her United States counterpart, China would need over 80 million barrels of oil a day-slightly more than the 74 million barrels a day the world now produces," writes Mbeki.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of Brazil, writes that hosting the Earth Summit of 1992 has helped his country towards the path of sustainable development. He is convinced that such development is key to a healthy and wealthy society.
"It was gratifying to see the Kyoto Protocol recently receiving the approval of our National Congress in response to strong public demand," Cardoso notes.
Margaret Beckett, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writes that a global response is needed to fight a variety of ills, including climate change. And Goran Persson, Prime Minister of Sweden, argues that governments need the support of all sectors of society, including the private sector and civil society, to cope with environmental problems.
The special issue of "Our Planet" is expected to be published on August 12.
*The collapse of the Soviet Union and the current problems in the People's Republic of China, as well as environmental problems in many Third World countries, underscore his assessment. Societies that do not have sustainable technologies will squander resources and then look elsewhere, with hostile intent, to acquire them. A CIA report published a year before September 11, Global Trends 2015 (which also anticipated larger and more deadly terrorist strikes, anticipated an increasing possibility of conflict over water resources.
I guess I agree with this too, but there's a big problem with the term "sustainable": Who gets to define what is "sustainable" and what isn't? Al Gore? Most of the people who use the term "sustainable" aren't using it the way you are, instead they're leftists who just hate SUVs, suburbs, strip malls, people who own land and want to do stuff on it, etc. So they define all of these as anathema to "sustainability" and there you go.
It's one thing to observe that societies which squander resources and pollute like USSR did tend to collapse and/or become belligerent. It's quite a leap to go from there to suggesting that central leaders can consciously plan how to be "sustainable" in all situations. Seems to me a big problem with the USSR's "unsustainability" was that they had too much central control, not too little.
One way to improve "sustainability" of, say, land usage would be to reinforce private property rights (landowners have little incentive to use their land in an "unsustainable" fashion unless government regulations exist to make that an appealing option...). Having Colin Powell sound off about the Need For Sustainable Policy doesn't exactly help achieve this state of affairs; it may event do harm rather than good if it convinces yet more people that the solution to all things is to hand control over to government.... IMHO
Appointed civil servants are supposed to be "above" political affiliations, aren't they?
The old elite, Lasch wrote, had a sense of obligation to country and community. But the new ruling class, more merit based, brainy and mobile, congregates on the coasts and puts patriotism far down the list in hierarchy of values. Indeed, said Lasch, "It is a question of whether they think of themselves as American at all."
In 1939, in his book The New World Order, H. G. Wells wrote: "Countless people will hate the New World Order... and will die protesting against it... we will have to bear in mind the distress of a generation of malcontents..."
Well, Mr Wells, we are your malcontents. But we're not going to die protesting your New World Order; we're going to live fighting it. And Seattle may just prove to be the Boston Tea Party of that New World Order. "I believe globalism is inevitable," Mr Clinton told Larry King at last year's end. Well I don't!
My vision of America is of a republic that has recovered every trace of her lost sovereignty, independence and liberty, a nation that is once again self-reliant in agriculture, in industry and technology, a country that can, if need be, stand alone in the world.
Early in the 1970's, Zbigniew Brezinski, later Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, wrote:-
"A global consciousness is for the first time beginning to manifest itself... we are witnessing the emergence of transnational elites... composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries; their perspectives are not confined by national traditions.. and their interests are more functional than national."
The one big force that can derail the rise of this new elite, warned Zbig, is the politically activated masses, "whose nativism could work against the cosmopolitan elites."
Brzezinski knew that the creation of any New World order would have to proceed by stealth. As Richard Gardner, Carter's ambassador to Italy wrote in 1974:-
"The 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up. An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than an old fashioned frontal attack."
Advancing on little cat's feet, they have done their work. By 1992 Mr Clinton could appoint as Deputy Secretary of State his room-mate from his Oxford days, who openly welcomed the death of nativism and the coming of world government. Wrote Strobe Talbott:-
"All countries are basically social arrangements. Within the next hundred years, nationhood, as we know it, will be obsolete. All states will recognise a single global authority. A phase briefly fashionable in the mid 20th century, citizen of the world, will have assumed real meaning at the end of the 21st."
Last year in Istambul, Bill Clinton declared himself "a citizen of the world."
This then is the millennial struggle that succeeds the Cold War. It is the struggle of patriots of every single nation against a world government where all nations yield up their sovereignty and fade away . It is the struggle of nationalism against globalism, and it will be fought out, not only among nations, but within nations. And the old question Dean Rusk asked in the Vietnam era is relevant anew: Whose side are you on?
My vision is of a republic, not an empire, a nation that does not go to war unless it is attacked, or her vital interests are imperilled, or her honour is impugned. And when she does go to war it is only after following a constitutional declaration by the Congress of the United States. We are not imperialists; we are not interventionists; we are not hegemonists; and we are not isolationists. We simply believe in America first, last and always.
And we don't want to be citizens of the world, because we have been granted a higher honour - we are citizens of the United States.
- excerpts from a speech made by Pat Buchanan to the Boston World Affairs Council in Boston, Massachusetts 2000
I guess I agree with this too, but there's a big problem with the term "sustainable": Who gets to define what is "sustainable" and what isn't? Al Gore? Most of the people who use the term "sustainable" aren't using it the way you are, instead they're leftists who just hate SUVs, suburbs, strip malls, people who own land and want to do stuff on it, etc. So they define all of these as anathema to "sustainability" and there you go.
I think that the leaders of most developing countries might have the right concept of "sustainability" in mind. (China being a marked exception.) In order to increase the standard-of-living of citizens, you have to grow the economy technologically while at the same time seeking to do it via environmentally sound and efficient methods. The USA reached its level of economic power via nonsustainable development, due to a overabundance of natural resources (which in many cases we still have), and with room to grow and expand. We're now seeing increasing disharmony where standard-practice development patterns are conflicting with environmental and conservation regulations, notably the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, that were conceived when the "bad" aspects of rapid industrial and economic growth were first clearly perceived. In developing countries, rapidly increasing populations have made things much worse than they ever were in the United States, due to a combination of two factors: less resources and less room. So they have to grow their economies technologically while avoiding the "squander phase" of economic growth that characterized the USA, and to a lesser extent, Europe. The fact is, they probably can, provided they are given the proper incentives and well-directed assistance. I don't think that the World Bank provide well-directed assistance.
It's one thing to observe that societies which squander resources and pollute like USSR did tend to collapse and/or become belligerent. It's quite a leap to go from there to suggesting that central leaders can consciously plan how to be "sustainable" in all situations. Seems to me a big problem with the USSR's "unsustainability" was that they had too much central control, not too little.
Excellent observation. The central control structure of the USSR was focused on results, not on seeking the right way to develop; hence, the leaders put pressure on the underlings to produce, produce, produce at all costs, leading to egregious problems. The one thing that Russia still has going for it is an excess of land and a lower population. They might be able to reverse some of the previous mistakes. Otherwise, to be an effective strategy, "sustainable development" needs to be a framework model rather than a mandated structure. The framework model concept means that economic growth can implement sustainable (i.e., efficient) technology and methods when addressing a particular growth topic (such as power generation). Rather than saying "do this", the framework model would indicate "these methods have the highest likelihood of success".
One way to improve "sustainability" of, say, land usage would be to reinforce private property rights (landowners have little incentive to use their land in an "unsustainable" fashion unless government regulations exist to make that an appealing option...).
Absolutely. One of the chief failures of socialist systems is that they offer no incentive for private profit. (We can observe what happens when profit becomes too much of a motivation, but that's a different debate.) One necessary aspect of sustainable development would have to be that individuals and small groups (i.e. families) will benefit from it, where "benefit" includes such factors as health and economic status.
Having Colin Powell sound off about the Need For Sustainable Policy doesn't exactly help achieve this state of affairs; it may event do harm rather than good if it convinces yet more people that the solution to all things is to hand control over to government.... IMHO
True, but I don't think his statement went that far; he underscored the threat that is posed by nonsustainable development. We have to be concerned, for example, about chronic water shortages and pollution in China; where would they look to alleviate such shortages?
Like all the brave concepts offered up by environmentalists, sustainable development was doomed to go the way of the rest of the treacherous lexicon of developmentalism - empowerment, participation, poverty-abatement, inclusiveness, and so on: ideas absorbed and redefined in terms amenable to privilege. Sustainable now means what the market, not the earth, can bear; what originally meant adjusting the industrial technosphere so that it should not destroy the planet has now come to indicate the regenerative power of the economy, no matter how it may degrade the "environment". Sustainable is what the rich and powerful can get away with.
On reflection, the transnational, supranational-wannabe elites are trying to recreate the world of the eighteenth century, before Napoleon's use of the "people's army" to prosecute "people's war" forced the crowned heads of Europe to appeal to nationalism in order to support their armed efforts against him.
Now that Napoleon and Hitler and the Communist International are gone, educated and elite people who see themselves as "rising above" and organizing their fellow-citizens by a Nietzschean or Darwinian right, don't want to be bothered with citizenship ties any more. Such ties, and their implied claims, threaten to impede their reproletarization of their human resource base.
"Efficiency" is just a codeword for the same old dispensation: more for me, less for you.
How many "last straws" does this guy get?
No, I think it means: "Say whatever is necessary to make our customers and stockholders feel warm & squishy about us."
It's like how every corporation/state or local govt/university/labor union, etc, touts their diversity, and how much they value diversity, and that diversity is their priority, etc.
"Sustainable," like "diversity," is a a feel-good word. Nobody means anything by it. They just feel good saying it, and hearing themselves say it, and hearing others say it.
The UN considers the United States to be a region.
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